Photo by J Leiby

“Nothing to say, but I guess you say it the right way /
It’s getting hard to tell the predator from the prey,” screams Dan Yemin in his tandem callout with Rachel Rubino against counterfeit culture within the hardcore community on “Blitz Kids Stay Stick”. The second preview from Open City’s sophomore effort, Hands In the Cookie Jar, has a certain kind of person in mind, and you can’t blame the vitriol. In a day in age when the scene is more concerned with selling limited tour merch jacked up four times its value on Depop, hard-stare aesthetics and fashionably glossy music videos over anything to do with actually being hard in speaking up on important issues through art, the Philadelphia hardcore band keep it real and lay it on heavy without any pretense, even if the group of scene vets excel at grabbing a hook when stirring up chaos in the discourse.

Open City’s Hands In the Honey Jar will be released October 6th on Get Better Records.